After collecting their prize credit, they left the club and headed to Orion's house to celebrate their victory. Belarin would have dinner prepared for them, then they would re-play and critique their game.
They stepped off the lift and walked down the hallway, excited, talking loudly, disturbing the neighbors. As Orion walked up to the door a laser scanned the 'D-chip' located in his shoulder and the locks released.
"Mom, were home!" Orion called out.
"Sounds like you made a good score," Belarin said from the kitchen. The three of them exchanged meaningful glances.
"I brought you this," Orion said, proudly presenting an artfully wrapped box of kelammel.
Belarin was truly surprised. "Orion! Where did you get these from?!"
"I bought them for you, at a repurant shop," he watched her reaction.
Belarin's eyes widened.
"We won first place," Orion said grinning. "That gave us more prize credit than we ever had."
Belarin nodded, clutching the gift to her chest. "Well... that's wonderful, darling! I'm so proud of you; all of you." She kissed Orion's forehead. "And thank you for these; I haven't had kelammel since the half cenro festival. She looked at her grown son and smiled. I wish your father could see you, now, she thought. "You guys must be hungry. Dinner is almost ready."
"Can I help you set the table?" Celli asked.
"Thank you darling," Belarin answered with a smile, "you know where everything is?"
"M-hm."
***
"You guys seem different today," Belarin said once they had finished their meal. "Did something happen at the club?"
"Well," Orion hesitated, "It was... I don't know exactly how to explain it, but... the way we won."
"Oh, so you were cheating!" Belarin teased.
"No." Orion said in mock offence. "You can't cheat, everyone is watching."
"So, what did you do?"
Fel glanced sidelong at Orion and raised his eyebrows with a 'don't ask me' expression. Celli just grinned sheepishly.
"We just got lucky," Orion said, choosing to simplify the issue.
"Five times in a row," Fel said under his breath.
"Well, I'm glad you had fun, and I'm glad you won! I won too; I got some kelammel," she said, holding the box teasingly in front of them. "They are sooooo good," she opened the lid. "Anybody want one?"
Their eyes lit up and they nodded in unison.
"Yes, please," Fel said.
They sat around the table savoring their treats when the com-link beeped. "Yes?" Belarin answered. Her voice activating the receiver.
"This is Hanro, is Celli there?"
"Yes, she is, just a minute."
Celli rose, took the receiver and pressed the privet channel. "Hi dad," she said in a more sober tone. "No, I'll be home later, we need to critique the game... the game," she said a little louder. "... ok... yes... bye."
Orion and Fel had started clearing the table when Celli got off the link.
"You guys go ahead with your game," Belarin said, "I'll take care of this."
"Thanks mom," Orion replied, "we'll get it to the counter for you at least."
***
"Okay," Orion said, once they were seated on the couch, "let's see what we got." He slipped the game chip into a small, black console. The mrith club logo appeared on the wall screen. -ORTHO-. They watched carefully until the first 'gut feeling' incident in Cynor tunnel. Orion paused the playback. "If we hadn't stopped when we did," he said thoughtfully, "we would have been caught in that tunnel intersection mess... maybe out of the game." He turned to his gunner. "So, that just popped into your head? At that moment?"
Fel nodded. "But it was strong, you know? Not just a random thought or something. I couldn't ignore it; it's like, I had to say something." He scrunched his face into a grimace. "Almost... as if I could see what was going to happen if we didn't stop." The same eerie sensation from the original event settled on Fel's chest and unnerved him. He quickly tried to change the subject. "Can we skip ahead to the purple cloud?" he asked.
Orion passed the controls to Celli and she navigated to the point in question. "Here we are," she mumbled. They watched quietly. Celli took a deep breath as she relived the extraordinary episode. "Let's see the twister," Celli suggested. "How could you possibly know there was a tunnel in the asteroid that wasn't even on the charts?"
Orion heaved a sigh of resignation. "I didn't know that. Not till that moment. It just... popped into my head," he said matter-of-factly. "Just like you said, Fel. Just as clear as anything else I know." He thought hard, trying to remember the details of the event. "But, once it was in my head, it's like it became as factual as my home address. I can't explain it."
"Me neither." Celli said.
Fel just shook his head.
"You know what I just thought of," Orion said, starting to smile.
"What?"
"You know those crazy dreams I told you about?"
"The ones you made up to try and scare us?" Fel smirked.
"I didn't make them up," Orion countered seriously.
"Okay, okay, they were real!" Fel held his hands up defensively. "What about them?"
"Well," Orion started slowly, "last night I finally found the object that I was looking for in all those other dreams."
"So, what was it?" Fel asked, becoming interested.
"It was a sphere of some kind," Orion said, reliving his dream, "about the size of a verner game ball. It was metallic and it had markings on the outside, like designs etched into it and they glowed yellow."
Celli cocked her head. "Were the designs round with dots in the middle?"
Orion looked at her in surprise. "How did you know that?"
"I saw something like that on the info line once, there are some still around. They were a type of personal safe used before hex-gap safes were invented."
Orion's eyes widened. "Celli, can you find that for me?"
"Sure, two mecs." A rapid succession of pictures filled the wall screen as Celli searched the info-line.
"She's fast," Fel whispered. Orion nodded.
"Here we are," she said.
Orion was stunned by what he was seeing. Celli observed his reaction. The pilot stood up and walked reverently to the wall screen, mesmerized. He reached up and touched the image of the sphere. "The designs are a little different," he said in a voice filled with wonder, "but... this is almost exactly what I saw!" Orion turned to face Celli and Fel. He looked at each of them seriously. "I'm telling you, I never saw anything like this before I had that dream. And this," he looked back at the screen, "is exactly what it was!" Orion walked slowly back to his place on the couch and sat down. "You guys think I'm crazy, don't you?"
Fel frowned and shook his head.
Celli quietly contemplated. "Do you think this is connected with what happened in our game?" She asked.
"Maybe," Orion said. "Do you?"
"When I got those ideas," Celli said quietly, "in the cloud... and when we lost power... I've never felt like that before." She stared at the picture of the safe. "It felt like..." she chuckled nervously, "like something – something outside of me – put that idea in my head, just at the right time; like it was meant to be. Like destiny. Like someone willed it, if such a thing could be possible. "
"Who?" Fel asked, not expecting an answer.
"I don't know," Celli gave a quick nervous chuckle. She felt embarrassed because she had no reasonable explanation for what happened. No reference point she could work from.
"It felt good, didn't it?" Orion said.
Celli looked up at him.
"Yeah," Fel agreed, reliving the experience, "kinda like... warm, you know... good, and also scary."
Orion nodded.
"Like something wanted us to win," Celli said very quietly. She wished that it were true.
The three of them sat in silence which Orion broke after half a minute. "I think I know where the safe is."
Fel shifted his gaze to Orion.
"Where?" Celli asked.
Orion sat back and stared at the picture of the sphere on the wall screen. "In the free zone," he said, "somewhere in the M-57 area. Near Belemer Lake... I think."
"I was there once," Celli said, staring at the image on the screen. "I accompanied my mom when she went to work there for a regta, at a med-center."
"I used to go there every cenro with my parents," Orion said, "before my dad died."
"I've never been there," Fel said, "but I wouldn't mind going."
"We would need a few calah, wouldn't we?" Celli reasoned.
"None of us has taken extra days off this season, right?" Fel asked.
The pilot and com-op shook their heads.
"So, we could use those," the gunner reasoned.
"Wait a minute," Orion said, snapping them all out of their trance. "We're not actually thinking about trying to find this... 'dream ball' are we?"
"It was your dream," Fel countered, "and what's wrong with a little adventure in the free-zone. I've hardly even been out there. I guess I never had a good enough reason to go."
"Let's sleep on it," Orion said, suddenly feeling anxious and afraid, "see what we feel by tomorrow."
"Having second thoughts?" Fel smirked.
"Well, it's just that..." Fear was evident in his eyes as he remembered the horrible monster that ended the last dream.
"What is it, Orion?" Celli asked seriously, realizing that something was the matter.
"Aw, nothing," Orion put on a smile, "let's talk about it at the cafeteria tomorrow. You guys better start heading home anyway, before it gets too late."
They stood up from the couch and gathered their things and said a few more things and thanked Belarin for her hospitality. Then they slowly put on their boots and took their jackets from the hooks on the wall and made their way out the door. Orion watched his gunner and com walk down the hallway. They turned and waved before they rounded the corner and were out of sight.
Orion closed the door and locked it. Belarin had gone to her room. Orion was left alone in the central area of their home. He stood in the middle of the space, looked at the things around him: the kitchen, the couch, the wall screen, the door, the window with Kypro behind it. He suddenly felt that he was floating above the floor; his spine and scalp were tingling; the air was humming - a deep penetrating sound. Time seemed irrelevant. Kypro seemed irrelevant. Orion felt that he had lost control again; he was a puppet, suspended above the floor. Yes, it would not be long before he would be admitted to the sanitorium. He had lost control.
But he wasn't the only one. Fel was the first to get a premonition. Celli got two of them. Why did that happen? He felt lucky indeed that his puppet state had come on him after his team members had left and his mom was in her room. He turned his head to look at the sphere on the screen - the safe. He found that his body followed his head, slowly, as if he were embalmed in a thick warm liquid. I do have some control, he said to himself.
He gazed at the sphere. I wonder if there is anything in it, he thought.
But he no longer believed that it was not real.